[Note: I italicize phrases I borrow from the chapter, and link to phrases I borrow from other chapters to help tie chapters together. While making it more tedious to read, the Tao Te Ching is best pondered in the context of the whole.]

Opps, it's nearly time for next weeks chapter. Time is odd, it seems to flow backward... but that's another story.

I love this chapter! Now why would 'my words are very easy to understand and very easy to put into practice, yet no one in the world can understand them or put them into practice'? Could it be because the free will ability to understand them and put them into practice, is an illusion created by our profound desire to be in control?

It is because people are ignorant can be viewed in two ways. The easiest is to view it as 'those' people are ignorant. I find the whole view works better when I include myself as one of 'those' people. Heaven knows I can recall numerous examples ops: . In the end, it is the recognition of my own ignorance that is most enlightening, i.e. to know yet to think that one does not know is best. So what do I know? I know my own ignorance. Ah,... straightforward words seem paradoxical, don't they.

Below is the literal Chinese wording (virtually) of this weeks chapter.

Word very easy know, very easy do,
Under heaven nothing can know, nothing can do.
Word ancestor, affairs sovereign,

Man only without knowing, is because I not know.
Knower rare, follower precious.
Is because sage, of drab cherish jade

The terser form can shift the view a bit at times. That's not to say the views garnered from the standard translations are lacking. It just shows there is more than one way to skin a cat. For example, nothing under heaven feels broader to me than no one.

Words ancestor is a concise way of saying that words, at best, are only a murky shadow of reality. There is the real thing - 'it' - and there is the word (a neurological array of firing neurons our brain cooks up so we feel we 'know it'). The word is NEVER 'it', though we easily succumb to the illusion that it is 'it'. Simply said, reality is the ancestor of words. Like time, reality flows backwards, from the shadow to the source.

Similarly, all action is an effect of previous action. Previous action, going back to the big bang if we like, is the sovereign, (i.e., dominate, supreme) of current action. Karma if you will. Cause begets effect. All phenomenon we see are symptoms of root causes, though we usually regard the symptoms as causes. And like puppets on nature's string, we become hoodwinked in the process.

Is because sage, of drab cherish, jade, reminds me of the way in its passage through the mouth is without flavor and, the way that is bright seems dull. Cherishing drab, from a worldly point of view, makes a mind that of a fool - how blank! When the mind is blank, it is poised to embrace the uncarved block . Naturally, every bone in our body clamors for the colorful and exciting. No wonder knower rare, follower precious. My my, how different 'it' may be from what we think.